To the Editor:
In a refreshingly nonpartisan column, Ross Douthat documents the many ways that the partisan mind-set clouds objective thinking.
The tendency to cognitively twist events so they fit a partisan outlook is worsened by the contemporary media environment. Cable networks (think of Fox and MSNBC), as well as a multitude of Web sites, present a one-dimensional view of complex events that reinforces the beliefs of the partisans who are particularly likely to seek out this information.
Given the fragmented nature of the media audience, cable networks benefit economically by offering news that attracts a partisan niche. Republicans become more convinced of the wisdom of a Republican worldview after feasting on Fox, while Democrats feel more confident that the Democratic administration is correct after consuming the MSNBC diet.
This leads to a lack of exposure to ideas and information that might challenge a partisan perspective. Partisan Americans—and there are many of them—are deprived of what John Stuart Mill called “the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
Richard M. Perloff
Cleveland, Nov. 29, 2010
The writer is a professor at, and director of, the School of Communication, Cleveland State University.
Note from KBJ: There is no better example of partisanship than the newspaper in which this letter appears. I wonder why the letter writer didn't mention it.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 